We woke up Saturday morning to some wet snow, but still decided to take Jeff’s mini van instead of my SUV, it had more space. My youngest would stay with Jeff’s family and visit the Indy zoo, while I took my oldest along for the ride. Never too early to infect him with the collecting bug and I hoped he would enjoy the experience. The ride was easy and the school wasn’t that hard to find. It was huge and it was red.

The building had seen better days and was a little dangerous, but that just makes it more interesting. My son thought it was spooky and wanted to know if we’d see any ghosts. Ghosts of classics long past perhaps, but not much more. The hallways were dark and strewn with all types of debris. The place had definitely been picked over and according to one of the locals, collectors have been pulling games from this place for over 20 years. At one point it was packed solid, now all that remained were a few dozen conversions, cranes, EM games, and a small mix of more recent titles. Regardless of the selection, it was still fun to poke around. How often do you get such an opportunity?

The building had some amazing old woodwork, with gorgeous banisters and wainscoting on almost every wall. A matrix style phone could be seen in each classroom, with child height and wall length chalkboards everywhere. The place must have been amazing back in the day. Strewn about in the various rooms were remnants of a once thriving coin operated business. Empty boxes for long gone NIB games, conversions galore, bootleg artwork, and even custom made cabinets for some unknown bootleg game. The place was saturated with arcade history, it was awesome.

Weird poker games, burned out pinball shells, collapsing walls, broken SAMI EM glass, and plenty of dust. This place had it all. You could just taste the lead in the air from all that flaking paint. While games on the second floor would have to be hauled down the massive flight of stairs, at least there was a loading ramp off the back of the school to make it easy to pack up the vehicles. All purchases would be wheeled out the back after payment and quick inspection by the operator. People were orderly and Brent kept things moving along smoothly. We were lucky enough to get a short tour by Elutz who also knew the operator and had permission to wander freely. He showed me the “bootleg” room where they used to strip non-earning games and turn them into something else. It was an awful mess but it told an interesting story. How many games met their fate in this room? The piles of power supplies, kit boxes, and stacks of bootleg artwork speak volumes. This was all that remained after decades of collectors coming in and pulling the best parts.

There were a bunch of pong clone type games to be found, worthless really, unless you like that kind of stuff. A funky Allied Paddle Battle and a converted Paddle Battle stood prominently on the second floor. The shell of a Kee tank, a converted bi-plane and a more-or-less complete bi-plane could be seen. A few EM games missing parts, a row of EM pins, a pretty nice looking Bally Road Runner, more flaking paint and a couple of cute little DECO Astro Fighters rounded out the second floor. The DECO’s were the reason we made the trip in the first place. Three of the DECO’s were located on the second floor, one on the first. My Magliner with stair climbers made the descent down the massive flight of stairs quick and easy.

If the main structure wasn’t enough, there was also another building across the street that housed many of the pinball machines that were for sale. Not only did it have pins and more games, it also had a giant hole in the roof! Ugh, never good to see that as you know the games would be trashed. I know a few guys got some deals, including a sweet Taxi pinball that went for a great price. Jeff and I were out of space for the ride back so I didn’t spend much time in this space, plus Edward wanted to show me the cabinet building room and I was eager to get back on the road. The cabinet room was where they used to build and assemble cabinets for the conversion kits, bootleg or otherwise. There was still a nice pile of woodgrain laminate on one table, lots of wood debris, old tools, including a nice press brake. It reminded me a little of dptwiz’s old work space We wandered around in a few of the rooms snapping photos, what a crazy place. I could spend a ton of time here, but it was time to get moving. We still had to load up the Deco minis.

So how many DECO mini cabinets can you fit in a mini van? The answer is four. With the easily removable bases we were able to tetris the cabs into place with ease. The original three fit so well we decided to take the fourth one too! We weren’t sure if any of them would work and it would be better to have the whole bunch to mess with at once. One of the cabs had a bad base and it was left behind, I may go back for it one day. You can see the games packed in the van and then nicely cleaned up sitting in Jeff’s garage. Pretty cool little machines, much better than their tall, boxy cousin.

I loaded up one of the nice machines and the part machine into my 4 runner, packed up our gear, grabbed the kids and headed back home. Got back Saturday evening in plenty of time to unload our junk and move the game into the basement for cleaning. It was a great trip and I’m glad I got to experience the school house raid.

The first thing that grabs you is the blatant Star Wars X-Wing imagery plastered all over the control panel, bezel and marquee. Why not? If you’re going to make a bootleg game you might as well slap some artwork on it that people recognize. It would get a few tokens for the art at least, while the gamer attempts to figure out what, if anything, Astro Attack has to do with the iconic franchise we all know and love.

John was able to get the game working pretty fast, “I actually got it going late last night. One of the circuit boards wasn’t seated in the edge connector properly and then the vertical hold needed adjusting but then it popped right in. Not a game I’ve ever seen before. The marquee is interesting. Each letter has a separate bulb and they alternate turning on and off randomly making a kinda cool effect. I’ll try to get some video or something later today if I have time.” He did have some time and shared this video with the collecting community. Pretty interesting how the marquee lights flash on and off, probably with the use of “blinker” bulbs. Might be a little distracting during game play, but still cool. (refresh the page if you don’t see the video)

John determined that the game play is identical to Astro Fighter by Sega/Gremlin/DECO. Interesting to note that the SEGA/Gremlin version of the Astro Fighter flyer has some blatant rip-off going on as well, beam me up Scotty! The game was released by a bunch of sources, perhaps that made it ripe for bootlegging, who knows? The cabinet has a simple design with an odd upright coin box and single slot coin mechanism. Done cheaply to keep costs down I’d imagine. Maybe it’s the Star Wars artwork, but I like the cabinet and would have dropped in a token or two to give it a try.

The printed circuit board mounts on the side of the cabinet, in a cage that doesn’t look like it was meant to go there. You can see slots in the wood that would fit a larger pcb. So is this pcb a bootleg or an actual Astro Fighter pcb? Tough to tell, as Astro Fighter pcb images from the internet vary. The monitor is nicely mounted with the chassis positioned on the side of the cab for easy maintenance. Everything inside the cab looks original and the overall clean, unhacked look of the cabinet got me thinking. Maybe this generic cab would accept a number of different bootleg games. Just mount a new pcb and connect the harness to the existing cab harness with those molex connectors. No hacking or rewiring necessary, just a new control panel and some new artwork. That would make this a pretty sophisticated bootleg cab, as it was made specifically for that purpose, with multiple games in mind. A multi-bootleg? I suppose the millions of dollars being made in the 1980′s on coin-op would have brought out all the scammers!

Of course I’m just speculating about this cabinet and its origins. If you know any facts about this cabinet or have seen other games in this style of cabinet, I’d love to know about it or see some pictures. Use the contact joystick and drop me a line.

The artist that worked on this one made an effort to do some color and design matching for the layout so the cpo wouldn’t look out of place on the game. He(?) even worked up a cool looking Centipede to add to the CPO, an element that was missing from the original design. Good color, cool Centipede, mushrooms and horizontal stripes. What else could you possibly need? I’ve only been able to find a couple of hacked up versions of this overlay and I’m on the lookout for a nice example. Check out my Willis artwork page for more information about Willis and their history.

I would like to add one of these overlays to the Willis artwork archive. If you have a nice example of this control panel overlay for sale or trade, drop me a line!

So I did some digging through my archives to figure this out. I re-read my 2009 post about The Wico Willis partnership. If you check out the catalog pages in the old post you’ll see another centipede overlay clearly listed, and it has the exact same part number. Well, minus the “00″ at the end, but otherwise identical. So the same part number exists for two pieces of artwork, but why? Here are a couple examples I have of the overlay from the Wico Willis catalog. Some genius decided it was a good idea to trim off the top and bottom, so its impossible to read any identifying marks, but you get the idea. So what’s the scoop on these?

My guess is that sometime after the Wico Willis partnership dissolved, Wico decided to make their own control panel overlays (or maybe they had made them previously, I just don’t know). Wico would have used their own printing company, possibly a vendor they had been working with for awhile and that company just didn’t use 3M paper products. They whipped up their own artwork and just kept the catalog part number on the front. I mean if you’ve already sent out a couple thousand product catalogs with the numbers listed, why change them? Just replace the product with your own and keep selling. Seems reasonable to me.

If you know anything about the relationship between Wico and Willis, or any information about either company, I’d love to learn more. This piece of arcade artwork gets added to the growing archive. Game on!

The overlay’s are only 11 1/4″ tall x 10 7/8″ wide and at first I thought they must be for the Sente Arcade Computer I Deluxe, due to the narrow width. The standard Sente Arcade Computer I cabinet takes a much wider control panel, so it couldn’t be for that cabinet. Even the conversion kit artwork would have had a wider control panel to fit games like Pac-Man, Rally-X, or Bump N Jump. Checking over the flyer images from The Arcade Flyer Archive I was pretty sure the overlays wouldn’t fit either of those cabs, take a look.

What the heck, what cabinet were these for? The seller I purchased them from had two sets, I bought one set. Each set consisted of a CPO that fits over a trackball panel and the other CPO fits a standard button and joystick configuration. Then it clicked. I looked around the flyer archive a bit more until I found what I was looking for. An image of a Bally Sente cocktail table. Hadn’t realized they made a CT version, but it makes sense. Take a look at the Mini Golf flyer snippet, you can see the cocktail table in the lower right corner. So instead of a pair of CPO’s for replacement panels, I had two cocktail overlays, each one for a different control panel!

Below you can see various images of both overlays. They are in excellent condition, printed on heavy duty poly-carbonate with a plain paper backing. The top edges of each overlay has a slight bend, but I believe they were pre-scored to make it easier to install on the panels. The die-cuts are all missing, but they were likely cut out and not punched with tabs as the holes are clean. The backing has some minor peeling, but other wise excellent. I would grade these a 9/10. As for the aesthetics, while the green background, white stripes and gold metallic accent color scheme is OK, it is also very boring. A fun, multi-color overlay would have cost more money and these games were meant to be money savers for the op. Boring is cheap. I’ve never seen a Sente cocktail table in person and a little searching didn’t dig up any photos. If you happen to own a Sente cocktail cabinet, drop me a line, I’d love to see it. If you liked this installment of NOS arcade artwork, please visit my NOS artwork page, where you’ll find more information and a gallery of pieces in my collection. In the meantime, these funky CT CPO’s will make a nice addition to the archive.

Operators were notorious tight wads and didn’t like to spend money on OEM parts, often turning to Willis for their more cost effective products. While not always the best looking, they were better than a worn or ratty original (in the ops eyes at least). So here we have the Willis Asteroids cpo, released in 1981, and measuring in at a whopping 26-1/4″ x 23-1/3″. This thing will completely cover the original metal control panel.

Now with every Willis overlay the production quality is excellent, and this overlay is no exception. 3M backer paper and adhesive, artwork screen printed on lexan, and die cut button holes. This particular example still has the majority of the die cut outs in place. My favorite little Willis men adorn the p1 and p2 buttons, but there isn’t much more to say about this one. Very simplistic, kinda boring, and lacking in color variety. I’ll add it to the archive anyway.

If you were an operator back in the day, these large wall hanging graphics were meant to give your arcade a little ambiance, to spruce things up a bit, or just to act as some quality signage for contests. Now when I say large, I mean 30″ x 50″ kinda large, we’re talking 1500 square inches of Willis graphical delight! These were some darn big posters! I have been looking for WEG pieces, any of them, on and off for a couple of years, without much luck. I did find the little Battle Damage sign, but what were the chances that any of the massive, foam core mounted artwork actually survived? Apparently chances were pretty good. Enter Pete in MA. Pete contacted me through one of the arcade game collector social forums to ask if I’d be interested in some Willis artwork. I get these messages a lot because not many people are actually looking to buy Willis artwork, most just want to get rid of it. Typically the seller has one of the more common overlay’s that I’ve already got a stack of, always a let down. Not this time! While Pete certainly had a snoozer cpo for sale, he also had the mother load of Enviro-Graphics! Here are a few pics of Pete’s game room.

I was pretty amazed to see all that WEG artwork in the wild as it had eluded me for so long. Pete told me he found the artwork during a warehouse raid on the East Coast, apparently the operator had stored the whole set in a series of architectural flat files. Some of the set had been given away to local collectors but he still had a fair amount and with new games coming into the game room he wanted the wall space. While not willing to sell it all, we did agree on two pieces. Including the amazing die cut piece shown below which is wider than two Midway cabinets! Now how to get them from MA to IL without paying $150 to ship? Pete got the pieces packed up at his buddies sign shop and gave me the details. 48″ x 48″ x 2″ and about 18lbs, yeesh, this would be fun to ship. I tried a couple of the, “Anyone heading from MA to IL want to bring something back?” posts in the forums and almost got lucky, but ended up pricing out the shipping via ground service. I opted for FedEx which cost $64, very fair compared to the other pricing I got. $64 is a lot to spend on shipping for a cheap a** arcade collector like myself, but I figured what the heck, why not splurge and get something for myself? Before long I had the tracking info and the package was on its way.

Besides a slight snafu, and FedEx toying with my emotions, the package arrived safe and sound. I can’t really call it a package, it was more like a flat tank. Pete really went out of his way to make sure the artwork was packed safely, thanks Pete. It took me a few minutes to carefully undo the box as I didn’t want to slice the artwork. But here it is, two pieces of Willis Enviro-Graphics artwork to add to the collection. Now I just have to figure out where to hang it

This particular Willis replacement overlay does a good job at trying to keep the original feel of the game. With bright colors, fun character’s from the game, and the brick motif, it could actually be used as it was intended – to replace your worn out original overlay. NOS overlays are tough to find and reproduction cpo’s have long been sold out, so this replacement might be your only choice.

As a stand alone piece of arcade art the Willis Zoo Keeper is one of their better attempts. The eyes on the moose make the character look a little nutty, but perhaps the placement of the joystick has something to do with that. A little Disney-esque humor at Willis perhaps? Now when I see the Willis overlay applied to a control panel and put back on the game, I’m not so sure that I like it. I expect to see the original dark color scheme that worked so well, much better than the brightly contrasting light blue and yellow on the reproduction. I wonder if the artists working on these overlays were ever given a chance to look at an actual cabinet? I’m guessing no. While the Willis Zoo Keeper cpo isn’t perfect, when you have a torn up original, it just might have to do.

Now with every Willis overlay the production quality is excellent, and this overlay is no exception. 3M backer paper and adhesive, artwork screen printed on lexan, and die cut joystick and button holes. The replacement overlay was produced in 1983 by Willis and instead of a part number we get, Willis Replacement Overlay Zookeeper. This particular example still has all the die cut holes intact, which gives a better look at the complete artwork. A good one for the archive.

Now of course with every Willis overlay the production quality is excellent and this overlay is no exception. 3M backer paper and adhesive, artwork screen printed on lexan, and die cut joystick and button holes. The control panel overlay is labeled part number 2001 and was produced by Willis in 1983, which makes it one of their later production pieces. I try to find something I like on every piece of artwork, so on this one I’ll say the player one and player two select character works for me. If I’m not mistaken, this guy makes an appearance on a few Willis overlays, quite the character. Overall the cpo is in great shape and will make a nice addition to the archive.

I was really looking forward to opening up this package to get a first hand look at the artwork. I ran some errands with my kids, recapped a wg4900 series chassis, and just kept busy. I would check the FedEx website every 30 minutes or so to see if anything had changed. Nope, it was still on the truck for delivery. By about 6pm I started to get a little worried, but the status hadn’t changed so I figured the holiday packages had kept the driver behind schedule. At 8pm I figured I was screwed, but it wasn’t until 8:20pm that I saw this…

I could think of lots of things to say, but none of them are nice. It looks like I’ll have to wait until tomorrow. Stay tuned.